'If you can dream it, you can do it'

On May 19, 2017, Robbert van de Corput, DJ Hardwell, gave a keynote at The Next Web in Amsterdam.

The 29-year-old DJ from Breda has twice been voted best DJ in the world and recently won the SpinAwards 2017 for 'Digital Celebrity,' for his creative and innovative applications on social media. So not surprising that he was on the stage of 'Europea's leading tech festival'.

During the presentation, he talks about his musical journey, which began at age 6 playing the piano, and shares 17 lessons that have contributed to his online success. He ends on his Steve Jobs "One more thing" with a look ahead to the next 5 years.

#1 Find your passion

1998 was an important milestone for Robbert. At the age of 10 he watched a documentary about Dutch dance, with Tiesto, Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten, among others. Until then he knew nothing about dance, but after watching that documentary he knew for sure that he wanted to become a DJ too. His passion for dance music was born.

#2 Develop lots of quality content

From the age of 12, Robbert started DJing. First on birthdays, but soon in various Dutch clubs. His parents accompanied him in this, because he was still too young to be allowed to enter a club himself.

Robbert started making his own remixes and thus began developing his first own content. At 14, he came on the radar of Radio538 and made his radio debut. Soon after, he signed his first record deal.

#3 Ensure optimal visibility of your content

At 18, Robbert launched his series of Eclectic Beatz compilation CDs. There were 2 albums released per year, a total of 10 albums, which became available in every CD store.

Between 2002-2009, Robbert also did over 1,000 performances in Dutch clubs to showcase his music. This is how he started building the Hardwell brand.

Hardwell also started his own Youtube channel to make his videos available.

#4 Make content available as a (paid) download

From 2009 to 2012, Hardwell started making a lot of mashups, mixing up two or more music tracks. He made these available as downloads for free or paid.

#5 You only need 1 viral content to break through

2009 was the year of Hardwell's big international breakthrough with his bootleg 'Show Me Love vs Be'. A mash-up of Robin S 'Show Me Love' and the instrumental version 'Be' by Steve Angello & Laidback Luke. All of Hardwell's big idols started playing this remix in the clubs. It was through these 'influencers' that his name was established.

#6 Start your own platform, get inspired by others

In 2010, Hardwell started his own label "Revealed," the platform for his own music and other promising artists he sees potential in. This allowed him to set his own course exactly, and he no longer had to walk in line with a record company.

During that period, his radio show reached 1 million+ downloads per month.

#7 Grow your fan base by collaborating with others

In 2011, Hardwell collaborated with Tiesto on the song Zero76, referring to Breda's area code 076. Because Tiesto was already very popular at that time, Hardwell's fan base also grew significantly.

#8 Make free content available together with other brands

In 2011, Hardwell played for the first time at a festival, EDC Las Vegas. In cooperation with Soundcloud, the entire DJ set was made available for free. An important element here was unique content. In fact, during the sets he played songs that were not played anywhere else. So if people wanted to listen back to it, they had to go to Soundcloud.

#9 Develop content in new formats

In 2012, Hardwell climbed to the #6 position of the DJ Mag Top 100.

Of his DJ set at Tomorrowland that year, a live stream was done for the first time. No other DJ had done this at that time, nor did they understand that Hardwell was going to do it. A year later, many more DJs started doing live streams.

#10 Be the first, fastest and best

As shown in the previous tips, Hardwell is constantly focused on innovation and trying new things. He always wants to be at the forefront.

Similarly, in 2012 he was the first person to record his entire DJ set on video himself, during Tomorrowland, and published it via Youtube just a few hours afterward.

#11 Invest in original content

In 2012, Hardwell developed a lot of original content specifically for his YouTube channel, which now has nearly 4 million subscribers.

#12 Give back to fans, make ´premium´ content available to them for free

Many of Hardwell's performances were made available to his fans for free as videos starting in 2013. As in that year alone:

  • 'I am Hardwell world tour,' 17+ million views
  • Ultra 2013, 32+ million views
  • Tomorrowland 2013: 26+ million views
  • ´I am Hardwell´ documentary

#13 Think out of the box, and go viral

2013 was the year Hardwell announced his world tour during the 'I Am Hardwell' show at the Heineken Music Hall. This entire show was broadcast live over the Internet in HD and was watched by hundreds of thousands of fans around the world.

His world tour ended with a show at New York's Madison Square Garden. This announcement was made in spectacular fashion via a takeover of Time Square New York, on more than 30 screens.

This tour and the method of content development and content distribution were very important in building his popular position in the dance world.

In 2014, Hardwell was named best DJ in the world for the 2nd time.

#14 Use partners to distribute your content globally

Hardwell makes extensive use of global and local partners to distribute his content worldwide. For example, in many countries he works with local parties to raise awareness of his music in that country.

He also made his single Blackout available for free on Spotify in 2015. This was the first time than he was going to do that through Spotify.

His two Ziggo Dome shows in 2015 were made available via Youtube as a free live concert, resulting in over 21 million views.

The "United We Are" album release was done worldwide with various partners.

#15 Be the first to use new technology

In 2015, Hardwell started 360-degree after movies of his performances, supplemented from 2016 by livestreams including Ultra Music Festival Miami 2017.

#16 Provide direct interaction with fans to increase engagement, use chat bots

In 2016, Hardwell was the very first artist in the world to introduce a Facebook bot. In 2016, it was used by more than 500,000 people and over 3 million interactions took place. 90% of interactions were read (compare that to an email newsletter) and the click through rate was 21%.

#17 Give back to society

Last but not least, Hardwell has an eye for a higher purpose and finds it important to give back to society. He started the "United We Are Foundation" in collaboration with several organizations in late 2015, which aims to help as many children as possible in Mumbai, India, get a good education.

On December 13, 2015, they held the world's largest party-for-good "World's Biggest Guest List Festival" (WBGLF), where over 80,000 people were on Hardwell's personal guest list and were able to attend, 10 million people watched the event live, over 23 million people shared the broadcast, and 18,000 children were helped to get a good education through the "Magic Bus program" #magicbus.

On December 3, 2017, the "World's Biggest Guest List Festival" will have a sequel, with the goal of getting an additional 100,000 children into the Magic Bus program, helping them on a path out of poverty, through education.

This is really next level impact!!!

View more information about the United We Are Foundation.

For the next 5 years.

In closing, Hardwell shed some light on what innovations he will focus on in the next 5 years until 2022.

Blockchain technology

Back in October 2016, Hardwell became the very first artist in the world to start a blockchain. With this technology, he sells music through his website and handles rights distribution.

This blockchain technology continues to be developed.

BOT & Content personalization through 'deep learning'

The chat bot is being personalized even further and made more relevant to the interaction between Hardwell and his fans.

Voice recognition

Interaction between Hardwell and fans will soon be possible from voice recognition. Imagine asking your Amazon Next, Google Home, Apple or Facebook where Hardwell is performing next week. You will then get a response right back, for example, with the right information about time, location and ability to order tickets and transportation.

AR/VR

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality is going to be used more and more in various applications.

Watch the entire Hardwell keynote

Want to watch Hardwell's entire presentation at The Next Web 2017?

Ask Hardwell on his bot by typing in "nextweb. Within a minute, you can download the presentation.

Also read Denis Doeland's article: How Hardwell Hacked His Career.